More than 100 people rallied outside Kansas City Hall on Wednesday — the same day Mayor Quinton Lucas was set to deliver his State of the City address — and the Port KC office on the riverfront with banners that read “Shame on Port KC.”
Unions representing Kansas City’s building trades say they’re fed up with the Port Authority of Kansas City. Negotiations for a more equitable pay and apprenticeship policy on the projects that Port KC gives tax breaks to have stalled after six months.
Officials with Port KC say resolutions to address these issues are currently under review by their board of commissioners.
Ralph Oropeza, the business manager of the building trades council, said the council started negotiations with Port KC after the council’s investigation uncovered workplace violations of people getting paid under the table and workers coming in from out of state for publicly financed projects. He said this isn’t a “union versus non-union” issue, and impacts workers who are not unionized who aren’t making a living wage.
“We have reached the boiling point where we're frustrated, and we feel that the taxpayers of Kansas City who are helping incentivize these projects need to be represented,” Oropeza said. “We need our local workforce to be represented on these jobs, and we want protection for the workers.”
During the bannering campaign, the unions and their allies will hold banners and hand out flyers detailing the dispute to pressure Port KC to continue negotiations and enact the policies. They say they’re not encouraging anyone to stop working on Port KC projects or picket the worksites.
The Greater Kansas City Building and Construction Trades Council represents 17 construction unions in the area. The council wants Port KC to follow a prevailing wage policy on all the projects contracted by the port or done on its property. It also wants the port to require that contractors who receive money from the agency participate in apprenticeship programs recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Prevailing wage is a minimum pay rate for workers on a construction project that’s calculated based on the average pay packages submitted by contractors each year.
Workers on development projects in Kansas City that cost more than $75,000 and any project that receives tax abatements or funding from the city are already entitled to earn the prevailing wage. But developers subsidized by Port KC can skirt those rules because the port authority does not have to follow the city’s guidelines and does not have its own.
Apprenticeship programs combine on-the-job training with classroom instruction to prepare workers for higher-paid and skilled careers.
Oropeza said he believes negotiations stalled because Jon Stephens, the CEO of Port KC, did not act in good faith and did not disseminate information about the negotiations to the broader Port KC board of commissioners.
“I am expecting them to act immediately,” Oropeza said.
In a statement, Stephens said Port KC is considering two "incredibly important" resolutions that address prevailing wage, labor agreements, workforce and apprenticeship programs. Those resolutions were on the agenda for the port’s Monday meeting, but were held until a future meeting.
“Port KC has two resolutions being considered by our commission which would be transformative and broadly beneficial to labor, workforce and quality jobs in Kansas City,” Stephens said.
Oropeza said the current prevailing wage and apprenticeship language being considered by Port KC does not go far enough. The building trades council wants to see stronger language surrounding these issues, similar to what is already being done in other parts of the state, like the port authorities of St. Louis and Jefferson County.
Until then, Oropeza said the building trades council will continue to hang its banners around town and pass out flyers detailing what it sees wrong with Port KC. He wants the community to demand better from one of its biggest development agencies.
“There is nothing better than a well-trained workforce and a local workforce,” Oropeza said. “Those workers then go back into the community and spend their hard-earned money here. What we're having now is developers come in with their own workforce from somewhere else, untrained, unsupervised, and skirt the system. That helps no one.”
